52 pages • 1 hour read
Mirta OjitoFinding Mañana
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Héctor Sanyustiz, A Way Out”
In the spring of 1980, Hector Sanyustiz rode his red motorcycle to Fifth Avenue, one of the most elegant streets in Havana. Although he desperately wanted to leave Cuba and knew that the United States typically accepted refugees from communist countries, he still worried about the unknown factors in an attempt to escape the island. In January, a group of Cubans had unsuccessfully tried to take refuge in the Peruvian embassy, hoping to claim asylum and be granted permission to leave the country, but the Peruvian ambassador had not been sympathetic. Sanyustiz had been a bus driver but had lost his job after swerving to avoid killing a pregnant dog, which incurred the wrath of a government official who happened to have been on board the bus at the time. The man had taken issue with Sanyustiz’s driving and used his power and influence to persecute him. Although Sanyustiz was able to hold on to his job for a while, he eventually could no longer bear the man’s scrutiny and he resigned. Such occurrences were common in Castro’s Cuba, and Sanyustiz was fed up.
Hector had been born in the countryside but had moved with his family to an impoverished area of Havana when he was a small boy. There, he was one of the few white children in the neighborhood and the only one to have been born outside of the city, and so he was bullied. Eventually, he dropped out of school and began hanging out on the streets. The revolution, which he heard would improve the lives of people like him, instead eroded his freedom bit by bit. He was increasingly under the eye of Castro’s vast surveillance network. He was in and out of trouble throughout his adolescence and early adulthood, and even after marrying and finding a job as a bus driver, he’d been harassed by the neighborhood watches in his area. After the incident with the government official made his job untenable, he knew that he needed to leave. He heard from a friend, Radamés, that the situation at the Peruvian embassy had changed, and decided to try to breach its gates and ask for asylum. Neither he nor Radamés had a bus, so they enlisted the help of a third man, Raúl. After several practice drives and information-gathering missions, the three successfully stormed the Peruvian embassy with the bus. Sanyustiz injured his leg in the process, but he did make it inside of the gates.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Ernesto Pinto: An Embassy Under Siege”
Ernesto Pinto was the chargé d’affaires at the Peruvian embassy. He had been troubled by a series of recent break-ins at the embassy and was suspicious that Castro’s regime had staged them to test the loyalty of the Peruvian government. Relations between Peru and Cuba had been fraught during the last few years, and Pinto had been sent to Cuba specifically to improve diplomatic relations between the two nations. On the day that Sanyustiz and his friends crashed their bus into the embassy gates, Pinto was nearby. He heard loud noises and gunfire and rushed to the embassy. There, he found several wounded guards, Sanyustiz, and a chaotic scene.
Pinto was born in Germany. He was the son of a Peruvian man who had moved to Germany to study medicine, married a German woman, and then stayed even after World War II broke out. He and his family, including the young Ernesto, returned to Peru only after the war ended: The American occupation of Munich had been so brutal that Pinto’s father was sure that the city would not return to any kind of normalcy for decades to come. Back in Peru, Pinto began a new career as a diplomat.
Although Peru had sent Pinto to Cuba to improve diplomatic relations, the Peruvian government had not been happy with the way that Pinto’s predecessor sided with the Castro regime in his denial of asylum to Cubans looking to escape the island. Castro had preferred Pinto’s predecessor’s position and was reportedly frustrated with the developing situation at the embassy. Pinto awoke one morning to the noise of bulldozers and saw that the barricades placed outside the embassy after Sanyustiz’s bus crash were being removed. Castro, angry with the Peruvians for allowing “social misfits” to claim asylum, was going to allow people to leave. Pinto began a series of tense negotiations with Castro, who initially accused the Peruvians of conspiring with the United States to sow chaos on Cuban soil. Pinto was worried that Castro would use violence to end the mounting crisis—thousands of people were now flocking to the embassy in hopes of being granted asylum and permission to leave Cuba—and he was eventually able to receive confirmation from Castro that not even a “single shot” would be fired. Although Castro spoke disparagingly in the press about the gusanos who wanted to leave Cuba, he let them go. Many on the international stage were puzzled by Castro’s “gross miscalculation” of Cubans’ desire to leave Cuba, but the rumor was that he had acted in anger when he decided to allow so many people into the embassy. Times had been difficult economically in Cuba, and he hadn’t counted on the way that the visits of so many Cuban exiles would reveal Cuba’s shortfalls and the United States’ prosperity to his populace.
By April 5, 10,000 people had gathered at the embassy. Conditions began to deteriorate. There was not enough food or water for those gathered, and bathroom facilities were limited. The yard outside the embassy was filthy and there was no room for anyone to sit down, let alone sleep. On April 7, Castro himself visited the embassy to assure those gathered that they would indeed be allowed to leave. They were told that their exit paperwork would come from Cuba, not from Peruvian officials, and that they were to return to their homes to wait for permission to leave. Although some feared a trap, people began to disperse. They were treated with hostility by their neighbors and those loyal to the revolution. Peruvian officials knew that their tiny country could not possibly accommodate so many asylum seekers, so they sought international assistance. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Canada, Belgium, and other countries agreed to take a portion of the Cuban asylum seekers. Slowly, Cubans began to emigrate. However, just as quickly as the exit flights began, Castro put a stop to them. He was organizing a massive pro-Cuban rally to take place outside the embassy and wanted there to be asylum seekers present for the demonstration so that his supporters would have people to rally against.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Unwanted”
Each neighborhood in Havana had been advised that, on the day of the march, it should have 100% participation. Everyone was to gather and march together so that there would be a constant flow of people walking past the embassy, showing their support for Cuba and its revolutionary project. Ojito and her family hid in the bedroom of their home, hoping not to be forced outside. They successfully managed to stay out of the march.
Life had grown increasingly difficult in Cuba. With few exceptions, people were not allowed to grow their own food or raise livestock, and the only food that was available for purchase or consumption was doled out through the government ration system. If a family ran out of food, they were supposed to make do without. Although a large black market sprang up to address deficiencies in the official system, it was risky to buy and sell illegally. Such activity could land a person in jail, or worse. Ojito remembers the difficulties faced by her parents when trying to transport an illegal pig from the countryside to their home in Havana.
Despite the shortages and difficulties, there was still an elite class who had ready access to everything they needed and wanted. The revolution was supposed to have done away with this kind of inequality, but high-ranking government officials became the new wealthy class. This kind of two-tiered system in which those connected to the regime led easy lives and the rest of the country—supposedly the true “heroes” of the revolution—were subject to constant struggle wore on Ojito’s parents. They had not supported the revolution in the first place, and now they were particularly upset to see that it had not turned Cuba into the paradise that Castro had promised. By 1980, their departure seemed imminent.
Ojito recalls the days surrounding the crisis at the Peruvian embassy and Castro’s massive pro-Cuban march. There was tension in the air, and even the schoolchildren were on edge. Sanyustiz was portrayed as a criminal in the media and everywhere there were posters of cartoon worms fleeing Cuba. Ojito’s family was the target of suspicion and verbal abuse because their neighborhood watch committee was well aware of her parents’ lack of support for the revolution. Even after the march had ended, Ojito felt uneasy and unsafe.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
This set of chapters details Héctor Sanyustiz’s involvement with the refugee crisis at the Peruvian embassy and contextualizes his story within 1960s- and 1970s-era Cuba. It details Castro’s response to the refugee crisis and further depicts the trials and tribulations of life in communist Cuba. Ojito recalls the difficulty posed not only by food shortages, but also by government policy about private property, and discusses the rampant inequality still present within the country: Castro’s rise to power, rather than doing away with elitism, merely created a new privileged class.
Héctor Sanyustiz is important within the text not only for the role that he played in the refugee crisis but also because of how his story illuminates Political Repression in Castro’s Cuba. When he was a boy, Sanyustiz and his family moved from rural Cuba to Havana in search of greater opportunities. Sanyustiz did not find better opportunities in the city, and though he’d been told that the revolution had been fought specifically for poor Cubans like him, he increasingly came to feel that the revolution had disenfranchised him. Sanyustiz couldn’t help but notice the way that rights and freedoms were being eroded bit by bit in post-revolutionary Havana. He struggled to find work but was also the target of suspicion because of his lack of steady employment. The networks of neighborhood surveillance frequently had Sanyustiz in their sight, and he reflected bitterly that his resulting difficulties with the law had their origin in his lack of revolutionary zeal rather than any real criminality. The author chooses to include this story to paint a more in-depth portrait of life in Castro’s Cuba.
Ojito also details Castro’s response to the refugee crisis at the Peruvian embassy. His regime’s treatment of Cubans who wanted permission to leave the country develops the memoir’s exploration of political repression. One of Castro’s famous sayings was “Inside the revolution, all possible. Outside, nothing” (79), and he brought that idea to bear during the refugee crisis in several key ways. Castro openly spoke out against the would-be exiles and encouraged his supporters to do so as well. He even incited people to violence against Cubans who sought exit paperwork, and Ojito recalls acts of physical aggression increasing in number and severity during the crisis. Castro organized large pro-communist marches, and Ojito remembers hiding with her family so as not to have to attend. This kind of behavior further marked them as gusanos, a pejorative Castro revived with gusto during this period, and the Castro regime’s retaliatory measures cemented their desire to leave.
It is during this set of chapters that Ojito narrates the anecdote of her family’s perilous journey to procure a butchered pig from contacts in the countryside. Castro tightly controlled food production, and what was once personal property, like food and livestock, was now considered property of the state. The punishment for buying a butchered pig could have been imprisonment, or worse, and Ojito’s parents took great risk in purchasing such an item. Ojito uses this anecdote to illustrate the absurdity of life under Castro’s rule. It seemed ridiculous to her to criminalize people for wanting to eat, and policies such as those related to food and food production influenced Ojito’s family’s decision to emigrate.
Ojito also recalls the inequality that remained rampant in Cuba even after the revolution. Although Castro promised to do away with Cuba’s inequality, he merely recreated it with different players. For the average Cuban, life was strictly controlled and monitored. There were few freedoms, especially as they pertained to work, speech, and self-determination. Food and other material goods were difficult to obtain, and the rations provided by the government were not typically sufficient to sustain a family. However, for those in Castro’s inner circle and high-level government officials, life was relatively easy. They had access to everything they could want, were financially well-off, and could make their own decisions. This kind of hypocrisy bothered both Ojito and her family, and it was also evident to figures like Héctor Sanyustiz.
